music, therapy, and me

This post started off very differently this morning, but my post on grief was making me cry, so I decided I needed to change topics to something a bit less maudlin and a bit better for a holiday. So, here it goes. This year is a year of firsts for myself and my family.  We are coming up to the first anniversary of my Dad's ultimately fatal fall. My cat died on Christmas morning. My father passed away two weeks after that, on my mother's birthday. This has been a year of grief and getting used to life without Bella and without Dad. It has not been easy on any of us. Because it is almost time for the first anniversary of my Dad's fall and because I am moving away from the home that I shared with my first ever pet of my own, I am feeling very sentimental and nostalgic. So, for this post, I think I will come up with several songs to help me remember and mourn and celebrate the lives of these two important souls in my life. Some of these will be funny, some will be sad, and othe...

I am a movie fanatic. This manifests itself in a large library of DVDs and Blu-ray discs, lots of soundtracks in my music library, and countless hours spent watching movies when I should (goblin!) be doing something else. I use the excuse that I need something going on in the background when I am working, and music is too distracting to my concentration. Movies fit the bill, especially when I know them by heart...and I know lots of movies by heart! I am especially drawn to old musicals. You know the ones - the big productions of the 50's and 60's that included lots of singing and dancing. I love those, but I think my favorites are the ones from the 40's. I love just about anything with Bing Crosby in it, and he was in two of my favorites, White Christmas and Holiday Inn. In both of those movies, the song, White Christmas, is featured, but that song isn't my favorite for either movie. In Holiday Inn, I love "I've Got Plenty to Be Thankful For," and my secon...

Happy Thanksgiving, American Music Therapists! Happy Thursday, everyone else!! Today is a day that is set aside in this country to recognize the process that European settlers and the indigenous peoples of this part of the world took to get to know each other. Whether you think that this situation was right or wrong, it happened, so I choose this day to think about other things that I am thankful for in these times. I am not a person who enjoys the "traditional" foods of this holiday. I am not a person who gets all excited about spending time with other people. In fact, this Thanksgiving is pretty perfect for me - ham and cheese casserole, pecan pie, lots of alone time, and absolutely NO shopping outside of my home this weekend!! I mourn the loss of focus from a day to rejoice in what we already have and the new focus on getting stuff. I don't want to spend this day trying to fight my way to a "deal." So, I don't. I choose to spend this day contemplati...

Here in the States, it is the fourth Thursday of the month of November, so we are taking a day to be thankful. There is lots of controversy about how we celebrate, what we are celebrating, and why we celebrate the way we do, but I choose to focus on the idea behind the entire day - setting aside a day to be thankful for what I have. In August, I started posting Daily Happiness posts on Facebook. Every single day, I look for something in my lap that makes me feel happy. I did this because I tend to get mired in negative feelings, and focusing on the positive offers me a pleasant start to my mornings. Taking 30 seconds to think of something that is a privilege or a happy thought has helped me find my positivity and my creativity. It is a mindful practice, I guess. I engage in thinking about something that I am grateful for, and I tend to find more things to be grateful for in the process. It's a small little practice, but it has made a difference for me. Today, I will spend s...

Today is the infamous Black Friday celebration here in the States. In case you've never heard of this day, it is the first official day of the Christmas shopping season and people tend to go shopping on this day. Stores open early and offer "deals" to encourage people to go in and spend money. I don't participate. I am much more of a Cyber Monday type of person. Going to a store doesn't really appeal to me all that much when it isn't the holiday season, but stores at this time of year? No thank you AT ALL! It amazes me how quickly we, as a culture, go from "I'm thankful for" to "let me get as much as I can!" I'm going to find a way to extend my feelings of gratitude from the holiday of Thanksgiving into this season of shopping and accumulation.  The first thing I'm going to do is to avoid all stores today. The best way for me to find the spirit of the season is to not be part of the maddening rush to get more and more ...

Okay, I'm warning you, it's Thanksgiving, and I'm feeling a bit sick, so be prepared for sloppy writing... You've been warned. For some reason, Thanksgiving mornings tend to be the ones where my neighbors decide to have their domestic quarrels out where all of us can participate. Four years ago, it was a father throwing out a mother for her drug use with her four teenagers screaming just outside my door at 4 am. I called the police. This morning's altercation was significantly calmer than that one, but it woke me up none the less. One of the couples from upstairs was out on the lawn, fighting. I think they were fighting quietly - I couldn't really tell with the fans on - but something woke me, so I think there was some door slamming going on at one point. The situation ended when the woman walked off and the man left in his truck. I didn't have to call the police. Long story short, I think that this day has the potential to bring out the best and the wor...

In the past several sessions, I've been improvising a song entitled I Am Thankful For . This is a therapeutic music experience (TME) that I have used before and will use again. It's main goal (primary goal) is to encourage thankful thinking - something that can be very difficult for my clients as being grateful is an abstract concept. The concept itself is simple - write down or draw things you are thankful for and then craft them into a song. Some of my clients have really gotten into this TME - they've written or drawn things and then have sung them for their classroom groups. Others have used the concept of being thankful as an excuse to have a behavior so they could escape from the concept. Yet others have written things and then asked me to set it to music. Giving thanks for something that you have when you think that everything has been taken away is difficult. My clients are often taken away from family, family often relinquishes parental rights, and my clients...

I feel sorry for the American holiday known as Thanksgiving. It comes in the increasingly commercial period of time between Halloween (the candy holiday) and Christmas (the "spend all your money on those you love" holiday). Hidden in the middle is small little Thanksgiving - a day dedicated to remembering the gifts we have because we live where we live. I am NOT a fan of traditional Thanksgiving foods, but I am a fan of the thoughts and ideas behind the holiday itself. There will be no turkey, cranberry sauce, or (shudder) stuffing at my Thanksgiving meal, but there will be thoughts for those near to me and far away.  I am usually far away from my loved ones on the holiday, so I can spend it however I want. Most of the time, I just cook a special meal for me and then spend the rest of the time doing my usual routines. I don't go shopping at all (unless I REALLY have to), and I talk to everyone in my near family. There will be dishes to do and laundry to wash. There wi...

Thanksgiving is one of my least favorite food holidays. There may be many different reasons for this - lots of pressure around the holiday celebration, getting the stomach flu in a spectacular manner at Thanksgiving time, my grandmother's need to parade us around in her birthday celebration/Thanksgiving open house every year, the insistence upon formal portraits taken every year, and my own inherent stubbornness when it came to anything she asked me to do (I inherited my stubbornness from her, and she didn't really like it when I refused to do what she told me to do!). Long story short, the things that most people love about Thanksgiving literally turn my stomach. I cannot stand the smells, the food, the hoop-la, so I opt to have Thanksgiving in my own way. I make a delectable dish called Crepes Ensenadas. It is a gooey, cheesy concoction of ham, green chiles, monterey jack cheese, tortillas, and cheddar cheese roux that makes me feel very thankful. It takes me about 2 hour...

This morning, I awoke at my usual time (translation - very, VERY early) and spent some time trying to deny that I was awake and spent some time listening to my mind wander. It's my own kind of mindfulness , I guess. I spent some time paying attention to where my brain was going. It started with, "I don't have to wake up this early. I don't have to go to work today," and then went down the road of "I need to get green chiles for dinner tomorrow." That morphed into "Thanksgiving is on Thursday," to "Mama Icie would have been 103 last week. Thanksgiving was her favorite holiday. I remember all the years of having to toe the Mama Icie celebration line..." Remembering my grandmother, Mama Icie, led me into some of the conflicting feelings that I have about this holiday. I love the idea of a day of giving thanks, but I don't think that I can only be thankful when I'm faced with green bean casserole, turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin p...

This is the time of year to be thankful (here in the States it's almost Thanksgiving), so I think I'm going to post the things that make me thankful about being a music therapist. I am thankful for my clients . Without them, I would not have found this wonderful profession. My clients challenge me, learn from me, and teach me every single second of therapy. Their engagement with and through music makes my life rich. They laugh with me, cry with me, get angry with me, and teach me about the importance of being authentic and human. I am thankful for music . I love that there are no "wrong ways" to make music. I can make music however I want or need to during the moment. I can find a song to match the mood that I have at any time. If there isn't a song already out there, then I can make one up... and I do! I am thankful for employers who recognize the benefits of providing music therapy to their consumers with the services of a trained music therapy clinician . I...

Over the past four weeks, I have leading a Therapeutic Music Experience (TME) with my students. We are talking, singing, and rapping about the things that we are thankful for. Now, these kids have developmental/intellectual disabilities and concurrent psychiatric issues, so most folks don't expect too much from them - wrongly so! We made Thankful Turkeys and then sang about what we put on our Turkeys. Most of the responses were to be expected from kids - my family, turkey, an X-box, pumpkin pie. Some of them were profound. "I am thankful that I have shelter." "I am thankful that this is a good place." "I am thankful that I can eat everything I want." "I am thankful for being away from my family." TMEs like this always challenge me on a personal and professional level. Professionally, I need to be reminded that my clients do not always know what I knew as a child - consistency, shelter, food, security. I need the reminder that I am a person ...

I have tried and tried to write blog posts lately and have found that most of my posts end up in rants. Now, I hate it when I can only see the negative sides of things, so this post is a Thankful post - the rules? I have to see positive sides of every situation going on. Here goes... I have a job that challenges me on a daily basis.  I have health insurance that pays for most of my medical care, even when they seem to want more and more money from me... My pet, Bella, purrs when I get home in the afternoon. My family loves me. I love my family. I have friends and acquaintances all over the world who stay involved in my life in a variety of ways. I am a strong, independent woman. My health is improving day by day, but I still need to remember that I am recovering from surgery and to rest when needed. There is much in my life to be thankful for, and I will attempt to remember this fact in every moment.   Today, I am going to try some new session formats with my s...